There's this one editor who makes a lot of edits. Some of them are beneficial (such as this one) but many others less so. At the moment of writing the editor has 107 accepted edits vs 51 rejected ones.

The user has a habit of leaving no useful edit summary, instead copying content from the post to the summary field. This bugs me, as without the summary it's sometimes difficult to tell what the editor was trying to improve and why.

I've rejected edits for a misleading summary (for example, an edit that modifies the code with the message "clean up formatting"). How should I handle edits without a proper summary at all?

@kviiri It is worse than leaving the summary field blank. Because it wastes the reviewers time by reading the nonsense..
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Roombatron5000Aug 1 '14 at 9:38

1

@iStimple, maybe a second before they realize that the summary field doesn't have a summary.
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kviiriAug 1 '14 at 9:38

14

That editor is also heavily abusing bold markup and quote blocks, yet almost all of their edits get approved. Might want to have a moderator message them.
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CodeCasterAug 1 '14 at 9:41

2

@CodeCaster, sure, but the particular editor isn't the actual topic of this post. I'm more interested in how to generally handle edits where summaries are misused or left blank.
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kviiriAug 1 '14 at 9:42

4

I think you should judge based on the usefulness of the edit itself and not on the edit summary.
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It's been a pleasureAug 1 '14 at 9:45

@mehow, the summary is a part of the edit and is the only way for the editor to explain what and why they changed, in a concise way. Putting nothing in there is wrong, putting something misleading there is even more so. Ignoring it isn't good.
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kviiriAug 1 '14 at 9:51

Shouldn't be, if you ask me. Everyone should be able to explain why they're changing stuff.
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kviiriAug 1 '14 at 9:56

1

You can @message editors with a comment. This may be a good way to explain to the user some of the niceties of suggesting edits.
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slugsterAug 1 '14 at 10:53

3

@kviiri There's no reason to always leave an edit summary. If I correct a typo, I don't write "corrected typo." That's just obvious. The only time you really need to leave a summary is if you are doing something that someone would look at in a confused way without it. Suggested edits, however, should have an edit summary so that reviewers can review it more easily. That said, there's no reason to reject an edit just for no summary.
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AnonymousAug 1 '14 at 15:02

1

If you find a pattern for an editor, flag any of their posts for mods and mention the details. An editor used to write "edited the nonsenses". After the flag was handled, that editor stopped. So, mods take care of such situations.
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Infinite RecursionAug 1 '14 at 16:59

4 Answers
4

There's really no reason to reject an edit because of the edit summary if the edit can speak for itself. The only exception may be profanity or something of the sort in the edit reason.

If someone were to correct all grammar in a post, fix formatting, and assure that they fixed everything possible, then they put the reason as "did stuff" or "blah" or something else unhelpful, it doesn't diminish the validity of their edit. Sure, it would be better if the summary was useful, but there's no reason to prevent a post from becoming better just because the editor didn't want to write a summary.

I agree. Summary is not important in almost all situations. If you're changing code, I'll likely reject the edit - summary or no summary.
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Roombatron5000Aug 1 '14 at 19:46

Not a possibility I had considered - don't hire me to hack your passwords!
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pnutsAug 1 '14 at 21:04

1

Edits display before and after. At least 95% of the time what has changed is blatantly obvious and 90%+ of the time the rationale too. Summaries should be respected, but not treated as sacrosanct.
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pnutsAug 1 '14 at 21:10

@Blackhole No, it's only useless if the edit can speak for itself. If someone is making an extremely complicated or confusing edit, a summary may be helpful to understanding it. Otherwise, it should be fairly obvious what was changed.
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AnonymousAug 3 '14 at 18:43

I usually let a generic summary slide if the edit is good and can stand on its own. There are some instances though where a summary is needed, like adding c++ on javascript question needs a little reasoning which I expect in the summary. With nearly 500 reviews, I have yet to see a blankgibberish summary.

The other big thing are contradictory summaries. So the editor formatted some code, but writes grammar in the summary. I would reject it as invalid.

If I see that it is a repeated offender, I comment on one of their posts, wait a little till I'm sure they have seen it or even responded and delete my comment.

I have yet to see a blank summary: that's because suggested edits require an edit summary of at least 10 characters, which causes some edit histories to read like this: asdfqwerty -> added 10 characters to body -> Rollback to Revision 1 -> sdfkjas;kj.
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AstroCBAug 2 '14 at 14:59

@AstroCB That makes sense, but I haven't even seen such gibberish. At least I don't remember.
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Artjom B.Aug 2 '14 at 15:01

It happens, but edits with bad summaries usually get rejected (as many have mentioned here).
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AstroCBAug 2 '14 at 15:02

I personally think that every edit that improves post should be accepted even if reviewer don't like its summary. If the person actually improves the post it should be accepted. I think summary should be optional because in most cases edits are saying about themselves. Summary only should be as a optional field if you want to give some extra information to the reviewer.

This invites the editor to never post a summary. If they make a substantial edit like heavily changing the tags, you would need to skip the review when the tags are unknown to you and you cannot instantly see that this is an OK edit. Since suggested edits need to be reviewed as fast as possible, because no one else can edit the post, only the user that knows the tags should actually approve or reject. If those are exotic tags, this will break, since none of the current reviewers can decide.
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Artjom B.Aug 3 '14 at 19:47

[add tag for better visibility] - No, that's not what tags are for, they are for categorization, no you cannot put c# of non-c# questions, reject as vandalism

Even if it's just a minor edit, not invalid, the summary will still make me reject as invalid

changed X (without changing it) - If the edit is really bad, reject as vandalism, else if the post score is below zero (if it should be, I'll go and vote on it), reject too minor or invalid, else if edit is good enough, I might approve if it's perfect except for the summary.

On your second point, Why is it bad to add a tag if that tag should be there? For example, if I look in the Ruby-on-Rails-4 tag ill see posts with no answers and low views. Sometimes I add the generic RoR tag because the question will get more views there and their problem isn't exactly specific to RoR-4 (even though that is the version they are using). Is that a bad edit?
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jkeuhlenAug 1 '14 at 17:39

4

There's nothing inherently wrong with adding more tags that help the categorisation of the post. If someone tags something c++11 but misses the c++ tag then it's perfectly fine to add the c++ tag.
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RapptzAug 1 '14 at 17:41

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@jkeuhlen, Rapptz: OP is talking about edits that are summarized as "adding tags for visibility". That is an incorrect reason, tags should be added for relevance.
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CodeCasterAug 1 '14 at 18:13

16

My two cents: Edit summaries are meta-content. If the edit actually improves the post and you can see the improvement, then a bad summary is no reason to reject it (and leave SO content in a worse state). Also, your list sounds like you also care about editor's motives for doing the edit? This seems rather backwards to me, only result of the edit should matter.
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hydeAug 1 '14 at 18:19

14

I'm a long time lurker of StackExchange, but very new registered user. Yet the line "Just no, vandalism however good the edit is." worries me. I've seen good edits, even very short ones, make a mediocre question/answer a near perfect one many times, and it seems silly that the lack of a summary should keep such an edit from being used. I thought the whole point of the summary was to allow someone to skim the revision history of the post. If someone is reviewing it, don't they already have to read the entire diff?
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Assorted TrailmixAug 1 '14 at 18:27

3

@hyde I don't care about motives. I care about the edit. The edit includes the summary. If the summary is "marriage help +somephonenumber", it is spam, however good the edit is.
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bjb568Aug 1 '14 at 18:37

2

makes no sense to reject an edit that improves the question for possible readers due to meta data they aren't likely to ever look at
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charlietflAug 1 '14 at 22:50

1

@charlietfl I don't know about you, but i look at the edit summaries on most posts I see.
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bjb568Aug 1 '14 at 22:53

1

well if it bothers you that bad, why not improve the summary if the edit is valid? Isn't that what editing and review is about? Being heavy handed isn't in the spirit of the site
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charlietflAug 1 '14 at 23:39

@charlietfl I do, along with the edit content - but only when it's worth it. No, that's definitely not anywhere close to what review is about. Don't be mean to people who have heavy hands :P
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bjb568Aug 2 '14 at 1:50

2

I agree to @hide: Vandalism should left for edits with really bad content (i.e. those shown in the suggested edit review tests). I almost never look at the edit summaries, but rather on the diffs, i.e. what what actually changed. Even though I'd like people (especially myself) to write better summaries, I believe what matters is the edit content itself. Most people often write edit summaries only because you can't submit edits without any summary.
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Uli KöhlerAug 2 '14 at 14:27

1

@UliKöhler What you also have to remember is that edit summaries are more than just what you see when you're reviewing suggested edits: they're part of the changelog of a post and they document its edit history. That's why it sometimes bothers me when 2k+ users don't leave a summary for major edits because it obfuscates the edit history with added x characters to body. Sure, some minor edits are self-explanatory and don't need a description, as are some programs that don't need commenting. However, if you're going to make a relatively major edit, consider leaving a summary for clarity.
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AstroCBAug 2 '14 at 14:56

@UliKöhler Vandalism is "action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property". If the edit is bad enough that I'd jokingly do it if I were horrible enough, it is vandalism.
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bjb568Aug 3 '14 at 0:06